Ex-Combatants’ Voices: Transitioning from War to Peace in Northern Ireland, South Africa and Sri Lanka (Palgrave Studies in Compromise after Conflict)

355 Pages·2021·3.096 MB·English

by  John D. Brewer (editor), Azrini Wahidin (editor)

PALGRAVE STUDIES IN COMPROMISE AFTER CONFLICT
Ex-Combatants’
Voices
Transitioning from War to Peace in
Northern Ireland, South Africa and
Sri Lanka
Edited by John D. Brewer · Azrini Wahidin
Palgrave Studies in Compromise after Conflict
Series Editor
John D. Brewer
Queen’s University Belfast
Belfast, UK
This series aims to bring together in one series scholars from around the
world who are researching the dynamics of post-conflict transformation
in societies emerging from communal conflict and collective violence.
The series welcomes studies of particular transitional societies emerging
from conflict, comparative work that is cross-national, and theoretical
and conceptual contributions that focus on some of the key processes in
post-conflict transformation. The series is purposely interdisciplinary and
addresses the range of issues involved in compromise, reconciliation and
societal healing. It focuses on interpersonal and institutional questions,
and the connections between them.
More information about this series at
http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14641
John D. Brewer • Azrini Wahidin
Editors
Ex-Combatants’
Voices
Transitioning from War to Peace
in Northern Ireland, South Africa
and Sri Lanka
Editors
John D. Brewer Azrini Wahidin
Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Department of Sociology
Global Peace, Security and Justice University of Warwick
Queen’s University Belfast Coventry, UK
Belfast, UK
Palgrave Studies in Compromise after Conflict
ISBN 978-3-030-61565-9 ISBN 978-3-030-61566-6 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61566-6
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland
AG 2021
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For John’s grandchildren Matilda, Tobias, Merryn, Juliet and Theo
In the hope they never have to live through what their parents and
grandparents did
and
For Azrini’s mother Che Mah Wahidin and her sister Wan-Nita, for their
love and friendship.
Series Editor’s Preface: Palgrave Studies
in Compromise After Conflict
Compromise is a much used but little understood term. There is a sense
in which it describes a set of feelings (the so-called spirit of compromise)
that involve reciprocity, representing the agreement to make mutual con-
cessions towards each other from now on: no matter what we did to each
other in the past, we will act towards each other in the future differently
as set out in the agreement between us. The compromise settlement can
be a spit and a handshake, much beloved in folklore, or a legally binding
statute with hundreds of clauses.
As such, it is clear that compromise enters into conflict transformation
at two distinct phases. The first is during the conflict resolution process
itself, where compromise represents a willingness amongst parties to
negotiate a peace agreement that represents a second-best preference in
which they give up their first preference (victory) in order to cut a deal. A
great deal of literature has been produced in Peace Studies and
International Relations on the dynamics of the negotiation process and
the institutional and governance structures necessary to consolidate the
agreement afterwards. Just as important, however, is compromise in the
second phase, when compromise is part of post-conflict reconstruction,
in which protagonists come to learn to live together despite their former
enmity and in face of the atrocities perpetrated during the conflict itself.
In the first phase, compromise describes reciprocal agreements between
parties to the negotiations in order to make political concessions
vii
viii Series Editor’s Preface: Palgrave Studies in Compromise…
sufficient to end conflict; in the second phase, compromise involves vic-
tims and perpetrators developing ways of living together in which con-
cessions are made as part of shared social life. The first is about
compromises between political groups and the state in the process of
state-building (or re-building) after the political upheavals of communal
conflict, and the second is about compromises between individuals and
communities in the process of social healing after the cultural trauma
provoked by the conflict.
This book series primarily concerns itself with the second process, the
often messy and difficult job of reconciliation, restoration and repair in
social and cultural relations following communal conflict. Communal
conflicts and civil wars tend to suffer from the narcissism of minor differ-
ences, to coin Freud’s phrase, leaving little to be split halfway and com-
promise on, and thus are usually especially bitter. The series therefore
addresses itself to the meaning, manufacture and management of com-
promise in one of its most difficult settings. This book series is cross-
national and cross-disciplinary, with attention paid to inter-personal
reconciliation at the level of everyday life, as well as culturally between
social groups, and the many sorts of institutional, inter-personal, psycho-
logical, sociological, anthropological and cultural factors that assist and
inhibit societal healing in all post-conflict societies, historically and in the
present. It focuses on what compromise means when people have to come
to terms with past enmity and the memories of the conflict itself and
relate to former protagonists in ways that consolidate the wider political
agreement.
This sort of focus has special resonance and significance for peace
agreements is usually very fragile. Societies emerging out of conflict are
subject to ongoing violence from spoiler groups who are reluctant to give
up on first preferences, constant threats from the outbreak of renewed
violence, institutional instability, weakened economies and a wealth of
problems around transitional justice, memory, truth recovery and victim-
hood, amongst others. Not surprisingly therefore, reconciliation and
healing in social and cultural relations are difficult to achieve, not least
because inter-personal compromise between erstwhile enemies is difficult.
Lay discourse picks up on the ambivalent nature of compromise after
conflict. It is talked about in common sense in one of two ways, in which
Series Editor’s Preface: Palgrave Studies in Compromise… iixx
compromise is either a virtue or a vice, taking its place among the angels
or in Hades. One form of lay discourse likens concessions to former pro-
tagonists with the idea of restoration of broken relationships and societal
and cultural reconciliation, in which there is a sense of becoming (or
returning) to wholeness and completeness. The other form of lay dis-
course invokes ideas of appeasement, of being compromised by the con-
cessions, which constitute a form of surrender and reproduce (or disguise)
continued brokenness and division. People feel they continue to be
beaten by the sticks which the concessions have allowed others to keep;
with restoration, however, weapons are turned truly in ploughshares. Lay
discourse suggests, therefore, that these are issues that the Palgrave Studies
in Compromise after Conflict series must begin to problematise, so that
the process of societal healing is better understood and can be assisted
and facilitated by public policy and intervention.
The contribution of one significant stakeholder to this process of com-
promise—that of ex-combatants—goes mostly unheralded. To their sup-
porters they are martyrs and heroes; to their detractors they are demons.
What this volume calls the ‘martyr-hero-demon syndrome’ is, the editors’
point out, an unfruitful lens through which to understand ex- combatants,
and the volume advocates a more nuanced moral framework to locate the
transition they have made from war to peace. It is a compelling book
because it deals with the messy and complex issue of the morality of
political violence and the social and emotional reintegration of those
responsible for it. This gives the volume a high level of originality.
The ‘martyr-hero-demon syndrome’ also fails to capture that most
people do not emotionally engage them as martyrs, heroes or demons,
but are simply indifferent to ex-combatants. There is an understandable
sense in which ordinary people’s indifference makes them reluctant to
applaud those who give up on the military struggle, since, they argue,
they should never have taken up arms in the first place. This view is naïve
and misplaced. Violence can be virtuous and necessary, especially in the
context of decolonisation, human rights abuses, extreme structural
inequality and repression. This naivety does mean, however, that militant
groups never get the credit they deserve for shifting to a political strategy.
In cases where they win, the new regime can quickly move on from war
economies and war politics, finding ex-combatants an inconvenience, in
x Series Editor’s Preface: Palgrave Studies in Compromise…
much the same way they find victims problematic. Post-apartheid South
Africa comes closest to this case. When they lose, ex-combatants face a
double bind, since criminalisation, social ostracism, rejection and neglect
are added to the loss, as in Sri Lanka. In cases where there is a negotiated
second-preference political settlement, ex-combatants have an ambigu-
ous status as a painful reminder of the legacy of war. This ambiguity is
especially problematic where the mutually agreed settlement is fragile and
contested. Ex-combatants in these circumstances become the focus of the
contestation over the morality of the war and whether the violence was
worth it. Northern Ireland represents such a case. The latest volume in
this series, which addresses ex-combatants in Northern Ireland, South
Africa and Sri Lanka, therefore has unusual pertinence since the position
and status of ex-combatants in each country are quite different.
Another significant contribution made by this book is the way it com-
plements two earlier volumes in the series that captured the voices of
victims in the same three case countries. Cross-national comparisons are
useful in peace research but rarely attempted, often because peace pro-
cesses are quite different, and the comparisons made here with respect to
the status and position of ex-combatants in these three countries allow
contrasts to be drawn between the perspectives of victims and combat-
ants in the three places, and their differences.
Another theme of the volume makes for an even stronger justification
for addressing ex-combatants, which is its focus on the transition many
ex-combatants make toward engagement with peace. They can become,
in the words of some authors, ‘peace warriors’, struggling as hard to con-
solidate conflict transformation as they once did in combat. Ex-combatants
are often a significant constituency in support of political solutions and
many become active in the search for compromise. Their involvement in
‘bottom up’ restorative justice programmes is well documented. It often
takes someone who fights a war to see its emotional costs; bystanders can
be the most belligerent and uncompromising. For this reason, many of
the chapters in this volume address the emotional landscape of ex-
combatants and give voice to the costs ex-combatants’ military engage-
ments caused them and to their desire for peace.
Ex-combatants are very heterogeneous as a category, and a further
strength of this volume is the distinction it makes between types of former